Director who?
“Of course, genius filmmakers are allowed to improvise, request supernatural feats from their staff, waste time and money, and generally behave in an inscrutable manner befitting their ineffable gifts. ’It seems to me that [Terrence Malick] does so much of his work in the editing room,’ explains production designer Jack Fisk on the commentary — but there, too, Malick works in mysterious ways.
“According to one of ’The Thin Red Line’s’ three editors, Billy Weber, Malick saw a full version of the film exactly once: a five-hour work print assembled during the 18-month-long post-production process, and screened for him under some duress. (’We forced him to watch,’ Weber says in an interview.) Otherwise, Malick edited by watching one reel at a time, with the sound off, while listening to a Green Day CD. If he missed any dialogue, it stayed in; if he didn’t, it would likely be supplanted by music or voiceover. ’I don’t think he was capable of seeing the movie as a whole during the process,’ co-editor Leslie Jones says evenly. ’That was a big adjustment.’
“It’s an adjustment for viewers, too, especially for that fervent cult of fans who have psychoanalyzed, memorized, and immersed themselves in ’The Thin Red Line’ over the years … It’s startling to find out that this same obsession-worthy film is not one that its director could find cause to watch in full or to edit with the sound on.”
— Jessica Winter, writing on “Absence of Malick,” on Oct. 5 at Slate
Fantasy life
“The Maoist temptation was part radical chic, part revolutionary tourism, part orientalism. It drew upon a deep-seated discontent with the corruption of Western society as well as the illusion of a radiant utopian future. It was also heavily infused with bourgeois self-hatred.
“By placing the emphasis on culture — the Great Helmsman was after all a poet as well as a revolutionary — Maoism offered intellectuals in Paris (if not Beijing) the opportunity to act out the role of revolutionary vanguard. So, too, it appealed to those enamored of the invigorating and moralizing qualities of popular violence. Robespierre’s ghost was much in evidence.
“In all of this what was happening in the real China did not matter. Indeed, as [author Richard] Wolin makes clear, the less that was known the better. Not even a visit to communist China could be allowed to dim the enthusiasm for the heroic struggles of the Red Guards and of the Chinese people. That the Great Proletarian Revolution might degenerate into tyranny was not something to be contemplated.”
— Jeremy Jennings, writing on “Mao’s Little Helpers” in the October issue of Standpoint
’Excuse us’
“I predicted this morning that No Pressure — Richard Curtis’s spectacularly ill-judged eco-propaganda movie for the 10:10 campaign — would prove a disastrous own goal for the green movement. But what I could never have imagined was how quickly public disgust — even among greenies — would reach such a pitch that the campaigners would be compelled to withdraw it from the Internet. That, at any rate, is what they keep trying to do — cancelling it whenever it appears on You Tube, pulling it from their campaign website and so on.
“Unfortunately their efforts are being frustrated by people on the [skeptical] side of the climate debate, who keep peskily insisting on reposting the video where everyone can view it. And rightly so. With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.”
— James Delingpole, writing on “Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail!” on Oct. 1 at the Daily Telegraph
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